Buster Posey now will be the every-day catcher, I presume. I only make the qualification because I haven’t heard or read Bochy say this and he has resisted putting Posey into this very spot for a long time.

I’d imagine Bochy will catch Eli Whiteside here and there, and of course, always when Jonathan Sanchez pitches. (Though that team is looking less and less mandatory over Sanchez’s last few outings.)

Let’s take this time to say that Molina was a very good player for the Giants for most of his three-plus seasons. Very, very good, but also pressed into a responsibility he never should have had as a middle-order bat.

Their pitching is too good (if it remains healthy), I can’t believe Pablo Sandoval’s going into full Aaron Rowand mode all season, this is a rough part of the schedule so things look worse than they are for the Giants right now, and I don’t think the Padres are running away with this.

The Giants aren’t done, despite the four consecutive losses and dead appearance against the Dodgers so far in this series.

Not done. But when the Giants inevitably do limp into 2010 expiration, this is exactly how they will look and how will play: Just not enough offensive firepower, not enough speed, not enough pitching to cover it all up.

Even the most polly-anna fans and observers have to admit most of that now, I’d think. (Just one hitter away from greatness! Oops, maybe not.)

They’re a .500 or slightly above .500 team that cannot put runs up consistently with a manager perfect to get them and keep them as a just-above-.500-team but not much higher. At least two true hitters short of real contention. At least two.

It’s who they are.

We’re seeing a team that will eventually will be done, maybe by August, maybe by September, and the reasons are no mystery:

* Weak, undisciplined hitting, symbolized by the staggering number of double plays and the decline of former star-on-the-rise Pablo Sandoval, who for sure can’t hit from the right side and isn’t as spectacular from the left.

-One extra 49ers thought: It has been pointed out by people smarter than me that the 49ers’ Santa Clara stadium plans hinge on many huge financial plans, not the least being the need to market and sell personal seat licenses to fund a large portion of the construction.

It has also been pointed out recently that none of the 49ers’ top business-side people have deep previous experience selling much of anything in the Bay Area, including Jed York, Paraag Marathe and new CSO John Vidalin, recently hired from the Houston Texans.

Yes, the 49ers are a long, long, long, long ways away from building that stadium.

–Short-attention-span reading, and writing…

Scot McCloughan has been working for the Seattle Seahawks for seven whole days, and let’s assume that the 49ers aren’t worrying that their state secrets are already being used against them.

Because at this level of the NFL, there really are no state secrets, even between occasionally paranoid division rivals.

Yes, McCloughan was the 49ers’ top personnel executive for five years, until he left the team under murky circumstances in March.

Reached via text message Monday, McCloughan said he had no comment, other than to note that it’s good for his family that he remains on the West Coast.

And, yes, his hiring by Seattle as a senior personnel executive last week raises a few issues about McCloughan’s institutional knowledge of the 49ers and the ability to utilize it for competitive advantage.

But the general reaction from the 49ers to McCloughan’s new venue has been mild and understandable.

What privileged information could McCloughan divulge before the Sept. 12 opener in Seattle? That Alex Smith is a big talent who needs to be immersed in a system before he can flourish?

Lots and lots of ifs, maybes and it-could-lead-to suppositions in this item. Lots and LOTS of them.

Another if: If that’s a problem for you, please rip away.

But I’m always interested in what could happen and what influential people are thinking, as important things are developing (whether the planned results take place or not)…

With that in mind:

Larry Ellison remains the most likely purchaser of the Warriors, now that they’re probably a little more than half-way through the sales process.

Ellison surely isn’t wandering into this blind–he’s a smart guy, and smart guys who are nearing the purchase an expensive item usually have been thinking about what they’d do with that item long before the final sale.

I think Ellison, at some point, will call Jerry West and ask him for advice and maybe he already has done that. They talked before a few years ago. If Ellison gets close to owning an NBA franchise, they almost certainly will talk again.

And I think Ellison at some point might ask West to join a new Warriors management team.

I think West has some interest in that. I don’t think West, who turned 72 recently, would want the day-to-day grind of running the basketball operations, so I called somebody today…

And a source with knowledge of West’s thinking today backeda report by Fanhouse’s Sam Amick over the weekend, saying that West thinks very highly of former Phoenix VP David Griffin and that Griffin would be a strong candidate to be West’s right-hand man.

-Should’ve mentioned in this column, somewhere, that, when Madison Bumgarner finally went away from his fastball yesterday, he showed a sharp slider and good change-up that were hard to hit and mostly stayed in or around the strike zone.

His fastball’s certainly not over-powering. But Bumgarner throws it with a little cross-body lefty action that gives it late swerve and, judging by the Boston swings (except on the two HRs), isn’t easy to pick up.

Granted, Boston was without Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz and J.D. Drew yesterday. That’s a lot. And the game was in the twilight.

But put up Kevin Youkilis, Victor Martinez, Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron… and that’s probably about the same as most NL line-ups, really, and definitely more powerful than the Giants.

If Bumgarner, at 20, in his second career ML start, can get through yesterday’s outing after that rocky start, and cruise through his final five-plus giving up only one hit, he can probably do OK for the rest of his career.

He probably won’t be a dominant starter. But I think he’ll win a lot of games, with any sort of offensive support–he’ll be a solid major-league starter, possibly right away, with the chance to be a long-term No. 2 or 3 guy for a long time.

Which means Bumgarner should be in the rotation semi-permanently, barring a multi-start blow-up or injury problems. And I think he will be.

—-the column/

Madison Bumgarner stormed into his 2010 Giants debut throwing zip-dart fastballs, feeling good, and maybe proving just a little bit to the world.

You think I don’t have enough heat on my fastball, eh?

The 20-year-old threw seven wicked fastballs in a row to two Red Sox batters on Saturday, ranging from 90 to 93 mph, none hittable.

Without any ado, here’s Giants manager Bruce Bochy pre-game on the call-up of Madison Bumgarner for tonight’s start against Boston…

One thought: I think they delayed this, or tried to delay this, because they don’t want to yo-yo with Bumgarner in the rotation. The Giants would like Bumgarner to stick in there, for five or six starts in a row, at least.

And yes, Buster Posey is catching him tonight.

—-BRUCE BOCHY, pre-game gaggle/

-Q: So it’s Joe Martinez going down for Bumgarner…

-BOCHY: It’s not his fault. Once we got him up yesterday, tough to start him today. So he goes back to the rotation in Fresno.

It’s nothing Joe did or anything. It’s just the way we used him. We skip him a start, got one inning, got up… If we’d thrown him against this team, we’d have thrown him to the wolves. That wouldn’t have been fair to him.

-Q: Could Bumgarner get a string of starts here?

-BOCHY: Sure, yeah. He’s getting his opportunity right now. Hopefully he’s here for a long time. That would be ideal for us. I know he’s been waiting for this and he’s excited to be here.